Reboot Ideas Conversations

Reboot Ideas: Plastover – An Exodus from Plastic Waste

Season 2 Episode 1

January 31, 2021

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Jessy Tolkan

Reboot Board Chair

Jessy Tolkan is the President and CEO of Drive Agency. With nearly 20 years of campaign and movement experience, her passion and drive for transformative change have taken her around the world and across issue sectors in pursuit of building the necessary power to win.

Prior to founding Drive Agency, Jessy served as Partner at PURPOSE and Co-Founder of Purpose Labs, a ground-breaking approach to campaigning and collaborating with philanthropy to drive change. During her tenure at Purpose, she helped expand their global footprint by opening campaign offices in India, Brasil, Eastern Europe, Indonesia, and Kenya. The Purpose Climate Lab, where Jessy remains a Collaborator and Senior Advisor, employs 40 staff globally, and has raised and invested over 40 million dollars in climate campaigning infrastructure over the past 6 years.

Over the course of her career, Jessy has built and led a series of powerful progressive institutions. Starting with her role as Executive Director of the Energy Action Coalition, where, under her leadership, the Energy Action Coalition grew a generation-wide movement of millennials to be at the frontlines of a national and international debate on climate change – long before Climate Change dominated the headlines or political priorities of our leaders. Jessy then went on to serve as the Co-Executive Director of the Citizen Engagement Laboratory, and Senior Advisor to the Working Families Party.

Jessy has consulted with leading social change organizations in the United States and around the world including: Progressive Change Campaign Committee, GetEqual, HeadCount, 1sky, 350.org, Groundswell, Web of Change, and Wellstone Action, The Women’s Forum for the Economy and Society, and Global Witness.

She’s been featured in Time Magazine, Glamour Magazine, The New York Times, Hard Ball with Chris Matthews, and Vanity Fair Magazine. Rolling Stone Magazine named her one of the 100 agents of change in America.

Jessy Tolkan received her B.A. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Political Science, with a focus in African-American Studies.

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Dianna Cohen

Co-Founder and CEO of Plastic Pollution Coalition

Dianna Cohen is Co-Founder and CEO of Plastic Pollution Coalition (PPC) and a passionate advocate against plastic pollution. PPC is a growing global alliance of more than 1,000 organizations, businesses, and notable thought leaders working toward a world free of plastic pollution and its toxic impacts on humans, animals, and the environment. A Los Angeles based visual artist, Dianna has shown her work internationally at galleries, foundations, and museums. She uses plastic in her artwork to make a visual and social impact. With plastic bags as her primary material for the past 27 years, Cohen is interested in exploring its materiality through modifications and the material’s relationship to culture, media, toxicity, and the world at large and shared this in her 2010 TED talk “Tough Truths About Plastic Pollution.” Dianna is a frequent speaker and guest and has spoken at the UN and international conferences and symposia, and has been interviewed by Al Jazeera, NBC Nightly News, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, USA Today, Martha Stewart Living, and many others. She is the recipient of the Global Green Environment Award, the Snow Angel Award, and Environmentalist of the Year by SIMA, among others. Dianna studied Biology, Art, and Film at the University of California, Los Angeles and holds a BA in Fine Arts.

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Jonathan Bines

Writer

Jonathan Bines is an Emmy-nominated comedy writer and part-time environmental activist living in Brooklyn. He is currently a staff writer for Jimmy Kimmel Live, and was previously a writer for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. He has also written for many online and print publications, and is the co-writer of the film Today’s Special. Jonathan was most recently the organizer of the Join Juliana campaign in support of the Juliana Youth Climate Lawsuit, which successfully filed an amicus brief in the case on behalf of over 50,000 young people from around the world, arguing that their right to a climate capable of sustaining life is guaranteed by the US Constitution.